personal finance and debt repayment blog

Your Debt Diary – Light at the End of the Debt Tunnel

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When I first began following the Debt Free Community on Instagram I was drawn in by the stories everyone would share about their debt free journeys. I find it fascinating to read about the progress others are making and also reassuring to know that I am not the only one in my position.

Your Debt Diary is a guest blog series by money bloggers and members of the debt free community for My Debt Diary. Each week someone new will share their debt story. This week Amy from Light at the End of the Debt Tunnel shares her mission to become debt free by Christmas 2020.

What stage are you at in your debt free journey right now?

We have budgeted and tried to pay off debt for years – at least since 2014. Somehow, though, our debt continued to increase. We started with new focus in January this year but found the debt free community in August and are now going “gazelle intense” as the Dave Ramsey community says. We’ve finally stopped adding to our debt and are aiming to start sinking funds in January.

What is your debt total?

£12,431. All on credit cards, all (thank god) interest free at the moment.

What is your “why”?

We want to buy a house. We’d just love to own our own home. We also have a daughter and we want to stop the cycle. My parents were always in debt (still are) and constantly spent more than they had on credit cards. I don’t want my daughter to ever experience this stress.

Are you following a specific plan or method?

I take inspiration from Dave Ramsey but I haven’t followed his baby steps. We are paying our cards off in the order the 0% interest ends. We will also use the sinking funds method because a big part of our debt was car repairs and other unexpected expenses.

What challenges have you faced along the way?

Not having sinking funds has made it difficult to pay down debt. Our debt has actually gone up as well as down since August but I’m working hard on paying it down. I always used to say we didn’t have enough money to put aside for unexpected expenses but something has to change so I’m going to give it a try. Even £50 in a sinking fund will help when I need new tyres or something else!

What are you doing to speed up the progress of your debt free journey?

We plan a budget together every month to stop us having to out anything on credit. Our sinking funds will also stop our debt increasing again hopefully. I am listing lots of items for sale that we don’t need anymore, doing surveys and I’ve also recently started matched betting.

When do you plan to become debt free?

Based on our current payments, we are about 21 paydays away! Hopefully Christmas 2020 will be a debt free one! My goal is 18 months though as I’m factoring in our childcare reducing when our daughter starts school as well as my annual wage increase. I’d love to reduce that even further because the long term goal is to save for a house deposit and the thought of it being nearly two years before we can even start to save is so depressing. Here’s hoping we can be in our own home in 3-4 years time!

You can read last week’s post here. If you would like to share your story with Your Debt Diary please leave a comment below with your email address or Instagram and I will get in touch. You can find me on Instagram here.